TV Shows What the Tyrants are watching

I’ve been thinking altogether too much about Battlestar Galactica lately. Not sure why.

Maybe because news has come out about The Plan telemovie. Maybe because Katee Sackhoff was cast in Season 8 of 24. Maybe because the Season 4.5 DVD drops next month. Maybe because I have the Caprica DVD sitting on the piano, mocking me for not having watched it yet.

Maybe just because I haven’t been able to cope with the fact that the series is over and it was just that frakkin’ good.

But I was thinking to myself about all the ways the new series was better than the old, and I realized that the old series doesn’t quite get its due among fans of the reimagining.

So I thought I’d do an old-fashioned matchup and see how the two stack up:

• Adama: Sorry Lorne Greene, I know you’re dead and all, and you were definitely awesome as Cmdr. Adama back in 1979, but Eddie kicks your ass. Edward James Olmos scared me in the way that the commander of a mixed civilian/military fleet should. When Lorne got mad, I felt like I’d disappointed my grandfather. When Eddie got mad, I wanted to hide under the sofa. Advantage: Reimagining.

• Starbuck: This is a tough one. Many were taken aback when Starbuck was turned into a woman for the new series, but I thought that Katee Sackhoff did a great job of embodying the spirit of Starbuck at the start, but then turning the character into something of her own. But how can you not love the classic Dirk Benedict character, cigar in mouth, winning at Pyramid games, romancing the ladies? I’d call it a draw. I can’t decide.

• Apollo: A young Richard Hatch v. Jamie Bamber? In and of itself, that’s a nearly impossible decision to make. But I have to go with the classic flavor here. Old-school Apollo was always good, always made the right decision and was damn cute while making it. New-school Apollo had great abs, but made bad choice after bad choice, screwed over Dualla and just made me want to slap him silly on more than on occasion. Advantage: Classic.

• Fight scenes: Hands down, the new series. Part of this was due to the advances in special effects, of course. But part was also because the old one recycled the same freakin’ scenes over and over and over and over again. How many times did you see the triangle of Cylon fighters flying in perfect formation, with one Colonial viper on their ass, shooting them up? Did the Cylons learn NOTHING from previous fights? These new Cylons were crazy! They randomly flew around, shooting anything that moved. And the fighters themselves were Cylons! There’s a twist. Advantage: Reimagining.

• Baltar: No contest. The new Baltar was a sniveling genius who just wanted to have sex with women. Old-school Baltar was evil with a capital E. John Colicos looked mean and evil and scary. You did not want to cross this man. A little-known fact is that an alternate ending of the original miniseries had Baltar being killed by the Cylons because the humans weren’t completely wiped out. He argued that his colony was supposed to have been spared. They beheaded him. So that’s why he did it. Yeah, I have the boxed set of the original series, the one that comes in the centurion-head-shaped box. Don’t judge me. Advantage: Classic.

• Cylons: “By your command.” That roving red eye. That humming sound whenever they walked into the room (hard for them to sneak up on anyone with all their clanking metal and that humming, but still cool). And some of them even had those little toga-ish skirts, which was just so stylish. But the idea to have the Cylons be Centurions, Fighters, Base Stars and the human form? Soooooo cool. The fact that they were all partly organic and that all machines were Cylons was a stroke of genius, IMHO. Advantage: Reimagining.

• The Quorum: Frankly, both versions of the Quorum of 12 needed to be slapped into submission. In the old series, they were always second-guessing Adama, despite his being proven right EVERY SINGLE TIME. Idiots. And they were all a bunch of really old white guys. The new quorum, however, typified every single thing that’s wrong with modern-day politics. Wait – they’re basically the same thing. I gotta call it a draw. I hated both of them.

• Pets: Old series wins this one, hands down. No daggits? No Muffit, real or mechanical? Come on, Moore & Eick. You totally could have gone the merchandising route. Advantage: Classic.

• Boomer: Another major character turned into a woman. But whereas the old Boomer was a loyal pal to Apollo and Starbuck and generally a third wheel, Sharon Valerii was third wheel to no one. She was, however, a Cylon, and almost killed Adama. I gotta go with Herb Jefferson Jr. on this one. He only tried to kill Cylons. Advantage: Classic.

• Aliens: Now this is a weird one. The old series had those weird bugs in the miniseries, some chicks with three eyes and a whole bunch of planets they kept mistaking for Earth that had humans on them. The new one: Nothin’. There were humans and Cylons and that’s it. I can’t decide which is better, but for realism, I’d have to go with the new one, because if there were a whole bunch of habitable planets out there, what are the odds that they’d all be just like Earth and evolve beings just like those on Earth? Advantage: Reimagining.

• The Galactica: She was an awesome ship in both series. Huge, well-armed and with all sorts of funky hiding places. I have to go with the new Galactica, though, because she wasn’t all networked up and showed her age. I liked her external design better, too. Advantage: Reimagining (but not by a heckuva lot).

Score

Reimagining: 5
Classic: 4
Draw: 2

Not too shabby, Glen A. Larson.

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